Top 10 Website Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

The overall design of your site is one of the most essential aspects to the success of your website running, coming with the same level of importance as the quality of content and SEO optimization. After all, when readers, especially new readers, come into your site, what they see in the first place is the overall appearance of the webpages. If the layout, color scheme and structure are not properly designed, you may hardly get the response you are expecting from these visitors.

In this case, if your design cannot bring you a positive result, you can check the following 10 website design mistakes to figure out whether you have made these errors.

Mistake No.1 – The Webpage Layout Is Inconsistent And Cluttered

At present, many webmasters or designers regard creativity as the top priority, but ignore the importance of usability and practicality. In this case, the inconsistent and cluttered layout might be a common designing mistake made by you.

For instance, you have showcased the sidebar for all the webpages, and have customized the display for the aspects of color, header and even location for different pages that come within different content categories. If so, when people jump from one page to another, they may feel that they have already left your site.

In addition to the point of consistency, you also should ensure that all your webpages are uncluttered and clean. Below is the bad example you’d better avoid.

Suggestions

In fact, it is fine to include some differences and variations. However, you need to make sure that the primary elements of the website design are kept unchanging.

Besides, never put up too many contents, especially the advertisements, on your pages without enough margins and spaces. Too many elements crammed together can make your content difficult to read.

Mistake No.2 – There Are No Call To Actions

The obvious and easy-to-use call-to-action links or buttons can tell your readers what response you are looking from them. However, after searching online, we have found that many websites simply bury these elements deeply so that we can only take some actions by accident.

Suggestions

Make the call to actions as obvious as possible. In the following, we’d like to list 3 common examples and what you should do with them.

Search Box – No matter you want to use the Google Search Box or leverage the power of your theme or plugin, we highly recommend you to place this special box in the right-upper location of your webpages.

Register Link and Login Link – If your site allows the registration and login for some purposes, the best places for these two links are your sidebar and footer section.

Newsletter Subscription – In order to encourage people to subscribe your newsletter, a popup subscription form is recommended.

Mistake No.3 – Your Homepage Is Poorly Designed

Generally, most readers will value the style of your website simply by checking the design of your homepage, figuring out whether your site is a professional and worth-reading one or not. However, many of you simply ignore this aspect, resulting in the complicated homepage that contains too many things to click and to check.

Suggestions

Stick to the principle of simplicity. An easy-to-browse navigation bar and some key contents are enough. Try your best to avoid the unnecessary elements and only left something that can draw the attention of your readers.

Unless some special situations, you’d better remove the autoplay of video and music when the homepage is loaded. If you really need these elements, do not forget to showcase the Skip button or the Turn Off button clearly.

Focus on the UI but not the creativity. Make sure that people can find their target content within 5 seconds.

Mistake No.4 – There Is No Visual Breaks For Lengthy Paragraphs

It is possible that many of your webpages contain the lengthy and long paragraphs to display the informative content. However, if you fail to insert some images or visual breaks, your readers may get bored and move on after seeing too many texts and words in a single page. Especially, if people prefer to scan your content to get the information they are searching for, the lack of visual breaking can be devastating.

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The easiest way is to put up some graphical components into your webpage. Or, you can display the quotes and special columns to separate the textual contents and make them easy to scan.

Mistake No.5 – Your Design Is Outdated With No Modern Features

It is true that you’d better not to change your website design every few months. However, if your site looks more than 5 years old with an outdated design, your readers may feel that you do not keep pace with the modern trends and what you say might not be up to date.

Check the 5+ years of website design in the following.

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There is no need for changing your website design frequently to follow any latest and new trend. Instead, you should consider the trend that becomes a standard, such as the full-screen image showcase, material design, sidebar display and many more.

Mistake No.6 – Disgusting Color Scheme

The disgusting and bad color scheme may make your website disconnected and your content hard to read. Especially, if you choose some bright colors like red and orange for your background, you may bring an unprofessional image for your site. Remember that the color scheme plays a vital role in the improvement of readability.

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You’d better not to showcase multiple color elements on a single webpage that have a large contrast. Instead, you need to choose the color schemes that can fully fit your profession and website niche. For instance, if your site is about traveling, the blue and green colors are the proper options. If your site is about art, you can consider white and gray.

Mistake No.7 – Your Site Is Full Of Flashy Stuff and Animations

We have to admit that these animated and vivid effects can bring more attraction to your website. However, many webmasters simply overuse this strategy by putting up too many substances, such as the parallax scrolling effect, animated elements, video sliders, flashes and some others. This practice not only slows down your webpage loading, but also distracts your readers’ attention from the core contents.

Suggestions

Surely, you can add some special elements to give a flavor for your website design. However, you’d better not to overdo this and focus more on your contents. After all, having too much flashiness displayed can do no good to improve your mediocre content.

Mistake No.8 – The Website Design Is Not Responsive

Although most webmasters have realized the importance of the responsive design for a website, there are still some people ignoring this aspect. Browsing using the PC is no longer the mainstream. Instead, more and more people choose to browse a site using their smartphones or tablets due to the portable feature. However, if your website design is not responsive, your webpages can hardly to be displayed properly on various devices and screens.

Suggestions

At present, there are a lot of responsive themes you can use to ensure the responsiveness of your site. Or, you can leverage some add-on plugins or modules to create a responsive version for your website.

Mistake No.9 – Your Navigation Bar Is Too Hard To Use

Having a disordered navigation bar can bring much inconvenience for people to browse your site. Once your readers cannot find the way around easily, they are likely to move to another well-organized website at once. In addition, we have found that some webmasters are looking for the uniqueness, and thus, locate the navigation menu in an uncommon place or add some special effects on it.

To be frank, the only purpose of navigation is to guide your readers, so you only need to make it clear and concise. No need to make some extra efforts on it.

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Mistake No.10 – No Treatment for Logos and Icons

We have found that many webmasters, even the owners of some e-commerce sites, pay little attention to the logo and icons of their sites. To be frank, the unique, meaningful and attractive logos help people identify and distinguish your site from others with much ease.

Suggestions

Personally, we recommend you to outsource this work to a professional designer. The logo must be fully fit your website niche and is easy-to-remember. In addition, you can use this special logo as the favicon of your website.

I've been an experienced web developer, SEOer and technical writer since 2003. I worked in many international high-tech companies including Microsoft and Autodesk before 2012. Now I own a startup company in San Francisco, CA, focusing on developing websites and blogs to deliver exceptional results to global readers by leveraging the power of Internet.
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